followers of Wat Tyler burned it in the reign of Richard II. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it acquired a high historical interest from its having been the prison of the religious martyrs of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, and of the political victims of the Courts of the Star Chamber and High Commission in that of Charles I. On the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641, it became a place of confinement for debtors and persons committed for contempt from the Courts of Chancery, Exchequer, and Common Pleas. During the 18th c., it was the scene of every kind of atrocity and brutality, from the extortion of the keepers and the custom of the warden underletting it. The Fleet was several times rebuilt; the last building was erected after the burning of the older one in the Gordon riots of 1780, the predecessor of which had been destroyed in the great fire of London in 1666. Latterly, it usually contained 250 prisoners, and kept ward of about 60 outdoor detenus for debt, privileged to live within the rules.

FLEETWOOD, or FLEETWOOD-ON-WYRE, a small but thriving town, seaport, and military station of England, in the county of Lancashire, is situated on a promontory at the mouth of the estuary of the Wyre, about 20 miles south-west from Lancaster. It is a modern town, and owes its origin and importance to its facilities for railway and steam-vessel communication. It is handsomely laid out, has an excellent harbour, and is a favourite resort for sea-bathing. A government school of musketry, which promises to be for the north of England what Hythe and Aldershott are for the south, is now in full operation here. It has a staff of instructors, and quarters for 300 men and 60 officers; besides a substantial hut-encamp; ment, about a mile from the town, for 200 men and 14 officers, where there are quarters for married soldiers, hospital, lecture-rooms, &c., and a large tract of land for rifle practice. In 1860, 1907 vessels, of 365,562 tons, entered and cleared the port. Pop. (1861) 3831.

FLEMISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. The Vlaemisch or Flemish is a form of Low German still spoken in the Belgian provinces of East and West Flanders, Limburg, Antwerp, North Brabant, and in some parts of Holland and the Walloon provinces of Belgium. So little change has taken place in this dialect, that the form of speech in which the Council of Liptines drew up (in 742) the creed, in which pagans were made to express their renunciation of idolatry on being converted to Christianity, requires only the alteration of a few letters to make it intelligible to a modern Fleming, Flemish has much affinity with the Frisian, and constitutes, together with modern Dutch (which was originally identical with it, and now only differs from it in a few orthographical and otherwise unessential particulars), the national tongue of the whole of the Low Countries. The most ancient record of Flemish, is a fragment of a translation in prose of the Psalms a thousand years old. In the 13th c., public deeds began to be drawn up in the vernacular, which are perfectly intelligible in the present day (as the Ordinance of Henry I. of Brabant, 1229, in the Brussels Book of Privileges). In the same century, J. van Maerlant, the father of Flemish poets,' author of The Historical Mirror, Wapen Martin, Rymbibel, &c., and W. van Utenhove composed numerous poems, and translated from the French and German, and very probably from the Latin. Willems and other critics believe that to the Flemish must be ascribed the honour of the original and entire poem of Reinart Vos, the first part of which they refer to the middle of

the 12th c., while the second part is attributed to W. van Utenhove, and supposed to have been written about 1250. The 14th c. was remarkable for the numbers and excellence of the Flemish Sprekkers, Zeggers, and Vinders, or wandering poets, some of whose works have been published by Blommaert; and for the origin of the Chambers of Rhetoric, which exerted a marked influence on the progress of literature during succeeding ages, and became the arbiters of literary and dramatic fame through the Netherlands generally. In the 16th c., the French element gained ascendency, and the old Flemish lost much of its original terseness and purity. Numerous translations of the Scriptures appeared; among the most remarkable of which are the Psalms by Dathenus (1556), and by Marnix (1580), the author of the Roomsche Biekorf (1569). The translation of the entire Bible was not effected till 1618, when the General Synod of Dort decided to employ learned men capable of giving a correct version from the Hebrew and Greek texts; and this great work was finally and two Dutchmen, Bogermann and Hommius. completed by two Flemings, Baudaert and Walons, Strenuous efforts were also made, at this period, to give greater freedom to the Flemish language; and hence this original Flemish version of the Bible has become a standard in regard to the construction and orthography of the language. Hooft, Vondel, and Cats are the three men whose names stand foremost among the Flemish writers of the 17th century. Hooft was a poet, but he is best known by his History of the Netherlands, which is held in high esteem by his countrymen. Vondel, who was one of the leading men of his day, made his satire on every obnoxious measure of the govern tragedies the vehicles of hurling the most cutting ment; and his works still maintain their ground. He had great versatility of powers; and in his latter years, his talents were directed to the exaltation of Catholicism, to which he had been converted. Cats was essentially the poet of the people; and for 200 years, his works, popularly known as the Household Bible, have been cherished alike among the poor and wealthy. Although Cats was a skilful lawyer, an active statesman, and a profound scholar, he found time to compose a great number of works, as the Zorgvliet; Trouwring (the Wedding Ring); Hou welyck (Marriage), which exhibit the most intimate acquaintance with the everyday-life of his country. men. His Moral Emblems have recently (1859) been translated into English, and published by Messrs Longman & Co. The 18th c. was barren of poetic genius in the Low Countries, but it produced several good philologists, as Stevens, Huydecoper, and Ten Kate, the latter of whom is the author of a work on the Flemish language, which has served as a fundamental authority for modern writers. The arbitrary measures of the French government, under Napoleon, against the official use of Flemish, had the effect of crushing for a time the very spirit of nationalism, while it completely annihilated native literature; and it was not till after the revolution of 1830, that the Flemish language regained its footing in the Belgian provinces. This revival of the national form of speech is mainly due to the unremitting efforts of such writers as Willems, Bilderdijk, Cornelissen, Blommaert, Conscience, Delecourt, Ledeganck, &c., whose works have imparted fresh vigour, and greater grammatical precision to the Flemish. In 1841, on the occasion of a linguistic congress held at Ghent, the members of the government for the first time publicly recog nised the existence of the Flemish element in the people, and addressed the meeting in the national dialect. The last twenty years have confirmed this

Blow-fly (q. v.). The forehead is rust-coloured, the thorax grayish, the abdomen blue with three black bands. The expanse of wings is nearly one inch. It is abundant throughout Britain and Europe generally, and deposits its eggs on flesh, for which purpose it often enters houses, having a remarkably delicate sense of smelling. The maggots are of very frequent occurrence on meat in summer, notwithstanding all care that can be taken.-A nearly allied species (M. Cæsar) is distinguished by its golden green colour, and is also common in Britain. It is found in houses from the beginning of spring to the end of autumn. Another (M. lardaria), with silky tawny face, a black stripe on the crown, thorax glittering white with four black stripes, and abdomen bluishgray, tesselated with black, is most common in the end of autumn, frequenting bushes of ivy and late flowers, and is also a pest of the larder.

FLETA, the title of a valuable treatise on the law of England. It is not known by whom this treatise, which is one of the earliest authorities on English law, was written, and it derives its title from the circumstance that it was written in the Fleet prison. Lord Campbell remarks-Lives of the Chancellors, i. 166 and note: I shall rejoice if I do tardy justice to the memory of Robert Burnel, decidedly the first in this class, and if I attract notice to his successors, who walked in his footsteps. To them, too, we are probably indebted for the treatises entitled Fleta and Britton, which are said to have been written at the request of the king, and which, though inferior in style and arrangement to Bracton, are wonderful performances for such an age. Fleta must have been written after the 13th year of the king (Edward I.), and not much later; for it frequently quotes the statute of Westminster the second, without referring to the later statutes of the reign.

FLETCHER, ANDREW, of Salton, a celebrated Scottish patriot and politician, was the son of Sir Robert Fletcher and Catherine Bruce, daughter of Sir Henry Bruce of Clackmannan. He was born in 1653. Notwithstanding the strong anti-English feelings which characterised him through life, F. was of English descent by the father's side; his father being the fifth in the direct line from Sir Bernard Fletcher of the county of York. But his mother was of the royal House of Scotland, the first of the Clackmannaa family having been the third son of the Lord cf Annandale, Robert de Bruce, who was the grandfather of the great King Robert. F.'s father, who died in his childhood, consigned him to the care of Gilbert Burnet, then minister of Salton, afterwards the well-known Bishop of Salisbury; by whom he was instructed not only in literature and religion, but in those principles of free government of which he afterwards became so zealous an advocate. So early as 1681, when he sat in parliament for the first time as commissioner for East Lothian, F. offered so determined an opposition to the measures of the Duke of York (afterwards James II.), then acting as the Royal Commissioner in Scotland, that he found it necessary to retire, first into England, and then into Holland. He there entered into close alliance with the English refugees, who had assembled in considerable numbers; and on his return to England in 1683, he shared the counsels of the party of which Russell, Essex, Howard, Algernon Sydney, and John Hampden (the grandson of the still more famous patriot of the same name) were the leaders. Though usually regarded as a republican, F.'s political creed, like that of Algernon Sydney, approached far nearer to aristocracy than to democracy in the modern sense; for though he was disposed to restrict the monarchical element of the constitution

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within the narrowest limits, if not to abolish it altogether, he was so far from being an advocate for a universal participation in political rights, that one of his favourite schemes for the reformation of the hosts of vagrants and paupers by whom Scotland was infested in his day, consisted in the establishment of slavery in the form in which it had existed in the classical nations of antiquity. Ou the discovery of the Rye House plot, F. returned to Holland. His next visit to England was as a volunteer under the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth in 1685; but he was compelled to leave the insurgent army, at the beginning of the enterprise, in consequence of his having shot the mayor of Lynn, with whom he had had a personal quarrel about a horse. The next hiding-place which F. selected was Spain; but he had no sooner arrived, than he was thrown into prison at the instance transmitted to England, to share the fate of his of the English ambassador, and would have been fellow-patriots, had he not been mysteriously_deli vered from prison by an unknown friend. Spain he proceeded to Hungary, where he entered the army as a volunteer, and greatly distinguished himself. He returned to England at the Revolution. A few years later, he met in London, accidentally, it should seem, the famous William Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England, and the projector of the Darien Expedition in London; and it was at F's solicitation that Paterson came to Scotland, and offered, to the acceptance of his country. should be carried out by the far greater resources men, a project which he had originally intended either of the trading communities of the Hanse towns, or of the princes of the German empire. The bitterness caused by the treatment which the Darien colonists received at the hands of King William's government, tended to confirm F. and his friends in their opposition to the Union with England, and led to his delivering in parliament those spirited harangues in favour of an exclusive Scottish nationality, which still stir the blood of his countrymen. After the Union, he retired in disgust from public life, and died in London in 1716. F.'s writings originally appeared in the form of tracts, and anonymously; they were, how ever, collected and reprinted at London in 1737, under the title of The Political Works of Andrew Fletcher, Esquire.

FLETCHER, GILES and PHINEAS, were the sors of Dr Giles Fletcher, Queen Elizabeth's ambassador to the court of Russia, and cousins to Fletcher the dramatist.

GILES, the elder, was born about 1580; he was educated at Cambridge, and died at his living at Alderton in 1623. His chief poetical work is a sacred poem, entitled Christ's Victory and Triumph, which appeared at Cambridge in 1610. This poem, although once admired, is now unknown to general readers, and is chiefly remarkable for having, to some extent, moulded the majestic muse of Milton.

PHINEAS, the younger brother of Giles, was born about 1584, educated at Eton and Cambridge, and became rector of Hilgay, in Norfolk, in 1621, and died there in 1660. His most important poem, the Purple Island, or the Isle of Man, was published in 1633. It contains an elaborate description of the human body and mind-the former being given with great anatomical minuteness. The mind is repre sented as being beleaguered with the vices, and likely to be subdued, when an angel comes to the rescue--the angel being James I. Although to a large extent formal and pedantic, the Purple Island abounds in fine passages, in which the lusciousness of Spenser and the gravity of Milton are curious 'Y mingled.

FLETCHER, JOHN. See BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

FLEUR-DE-LIS. Authorities are divided as to whether this celebrated emblem is derived from the white lily of the garden, or from the flag or iris, which, as generally represented, it more resembles both in form and colour. Ancient heralds,' says Newton (Display, p. 145), 'tell us that the Franks of old had a custom, at the proclamation of their king, to elevate him upon a shield or target, and place Fleur-de-Lis. in his hand a reed or flag in blossom, instead of a sceptre; and from thence the kings of the first and second race in France are represented with sceptres in their hands like the flag with its flower, and which flowers became the armorial figures of France.' However this may be, or whatever may be the value of the other legendary tales, such as that a blue banner, embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis, came down from heaven; that an angel gave it to King Clovis at his baptism, and the like; there can be little doubt that, from Clovis downwards, the kings of France bore as their arms first an indefinite number, and latterly three golden lilies on a blue field, or, as heralds would say, azure, three fleurs-de-lis, Or-It was Charles VI. who reduced what had hitherto been the indefinite number of fleurs-de-lis to three, disposed two and one; some conjecture upon account of the Trinity, others say, to represent the three different races of the kings of France.'--Nisbet, i. 383. Many English and Scotch families bear the fleur-de-lis in some portion of their shield, and generally with some reference to France.

FLEURUS, a small town of Belgium, in the province of Hainault, is situated north of the left bank of the Sambre, and 15 miles west of Namur: pop. about 2200. It has been the scene of several contests, the last and most important, however, being the battle of F., fought here 26th June 1794, between the army of the French Republic, consisting of 89,000 troops, under Jourdan, and the allies, who were inferior in numerical strength, under the Prince of Saxe-Coburg. The latter leader gave orders for a retreat at the very moment when a resolute advance might have decided the victory in his favour, and the result was, that Jourdan was enabled to unite his army with those of the Moselle, the Ardennes, and the North, and that the alled forces were compelled for a time to evacuate

Flanders.

FLEURY, FLORY, FLOWRY, FLEURETTE, &c., in heraldry, signifies that the object is adorned with fleurs-de-lis; a cross-fleury, for example, is a cross, the ends of which are in the form of fleursde-lis. There are several varieties in the modes of representing these crosses, which has led to distinctions being made between them by heralds too trivial to be mentioned: but they are all distinguishable from the cross-potance, or potancée, incorrectly spelled patonce by English heralds. (Mackenzie's Science of Heraldry, p. 44). In the latter, the limbs are in the form of the segments of a circle, and the foliation is a mere bud; whereas the cross-fleury has the limbs straight and the terminations distinctly floriated. Thus

Perhaps, the most celebrated instance of this bearing, is in the case of the double prepuce flowery and counter-flowery gules which surrounds the red lion in the royal arms of Scotland, and which Charlemagne is said to have conferred on Achaius, king of Scotland, for assistance in his wars. The object, according to Nisbet (ii. 101), was to shew that, as the lion had defended the lilies of France, these hereafter shall continue a defence for the Scots lion, and as a badge of friendship, which has still continued.' That the lilies were assumed in consequence of the intimate relation which prevailed between France and Scotland for so many generations, will not be doubted; but the special occasion of the assumption may not be admitted in our day to be quite beyond the reach of scepticism, notwithstanding Nisbet's assertion that it is so fully instructed by ancient and modern writers that he need not trouble his readers with a long catalogue of them.

FLEURY, CLAUDE, a French church historian, was born at Paris, 6th December 1640, and was educated at first for the law, but preferring an ecclesiastical career, subsequently took priest's orders. In 1672, he became tutor to the young Prince de Conti, who was brought up along with the dauphin, and at a later period, to the Comte de Vermandois, natural son of Louis XIV. After the death of the Comte in 1683, the French monarch appointed him, under Fenelon, tutor to the Princes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berri, and also abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Loc-Dieu. When the princes had completed their education, F. was rewarded with the priorate of Argenteuil. The Duke of Orleans selected him for confessor to the young king, Louis XV., giving as his reason for so doing, that F. was neither Jansenist, nor Molinist, nor Ultramontanist, but Catholic. F. held this office till 1722, when the infirmities of age compelled him to resign it. He died 14th July 1723. F. was as learned as he was modest, and as mild and kind-hearted as he was simple in his manners, and upright in his conduct. Among his numerous works may be mentioned, Maurs des Israélites (Paris, 1681); Mours des Chrétiens (Paris, 1662); Traité du Choix et de la Methode des Etudes (Paris, 1686); Institution au Droit Ecclesiastique (1687); and, above all, the Histo re Ecclesiastique (20 vols., Paris, 1691-1720). On this work, F. laboured thirty years. It is marked by great learning, and, on the whole, by a judiciously critical spirit. What may be called his professional sympathies, are held in check by a noble desire to be impartial, which might well put to the blush the unveracious partisanship of many Protestant writers. Semler (q. v.), an eminent German theological professor, avowed that his lectures were at first mainly extracts from the Histoire Ecclesiastique. Even Voltaire praised it. 'The history of F.,' says he, is the best that has ever been executed.' D'Alembert, and many others, recommend F.'s style as a model of elegant simplicity. called Abrégé de l'histoire Eccles ast que de Fleury, published at Berne in 1776, is ascribed to Frederic the Great. A posthumous work of F.'s, entitled Discours sur les libertés de l'Eglise Gallicane, has always been very popular.

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FLEXURE, or FLEXION, is the bending or curving of a line or figure (see CURVATURE). curve is said to have a point of contrary flexure at the point where it changes its character of concavity or convexity towards a given line. In the art of building, flexure denotes the bending of loaded beams. If a beam, supported at its two ends, be loaded, it bends, its lower surface becoming convex, and its upper concave. In this bending, the particles